Chevrolet Bolt EV Premier: Race organizer review

In which your Race Organizer feels no range anxiety with GM's very practical EV

July 19, 2018

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As a resident of sun-drenched Colorado with a big south-facing roof, I plan on getting solar panels … just as soon as I can find a daredevil solar-installation company willing to work on my Victorian's 50-degree slope roof. That means I'm shopping for electric cars -- getting thermonuclear-sourced fuel for free sounds great -- and that means I have been trying out EVs on some of my recent Race Organizer Reviews. Earlier this year, I headed to the San Francisco Bay Area to help my fellow 24 Hours of Lemons officials deal with some issues around the horrible fabulous Upside Down Camaro, which now takes up much of the floor space in Lemons HQ, and I picked up an Orange Burst Metallic Chevrolet Bolt for the trip. It was a 2017 model, but nothing substantial has changed this year.

It's a car, nothing spectacular to report on the driving front. There's some throwback-ish torque steer, no doubt due to the instantly applied 266 pound-feet-o-torque from the electric motor, but nothing unmanageable. The Michelin Energy Saver A/S tires grip poorly and make plenty of road noise, as you might expect; I might consider switching to a set of somewhat less-efficient-but-grippier tires, were I to buy a Bolt… and I am considering buying one.

The seats and other interior components were made with light weight in mind, so there's not much fancy in here. Photo by Murilee Martin

This is a Point-A-To-Point-B transportation appliance, so you don't get much luxury inside; perhaps the full Bolt Brougham d'Elegance Landau Salon version, featuring red velour interior and a chandelier for a dome light, will be available down the road. Still, the experience inside is perfectly acceptable, and you'll feel both cheap and green (provided you get your electricity from a non-coal-burning source) driving this thing.

I wasn't willing to run it down to the last couple of miles, but I got over 200 miles on a charge at least once. Photo by Murilee Martin

The Bolt has the kind of range that makes it a real car, not just something for your short urban commute, and the Range-O-Meter seems accurate (at least in the benign mid-60s temperatures of the Bay Area in late winter, at any rate). I wasn't gentle on the throttle during highway driving, and I didn't hesitate to turn on the air conditioning or crank up the tunes while driving, and I still saw well over 200 miles on a charge -- during some marathon junkyard-hopping trips -- with no sign that I was about to be stranded.

There are many places to get a 240VAC charge in the East Bay, but I prefer the solar power at this union hall in San Leandro. Photo by Murilee Martin

You can charge the Bolt with plain old household wall-outlet 120VAC power but you'll only get about 50 miles of driving out of an overnight charge. I took advantage of a free nearby solar-powered Level 2 charging station, which got me about 20 miles of driving in a half-hour stop.

Not as quick as a gas station, but quick enough. Photo by Murilee Martin

Most Bolt owners will get a 240VAC home-charging rig, which will provide a full charge overnight, but you can pay a fast-charging station for a quick fill-up. Still way cheaper per mile than internal combustion.

Setting up this photograph made Tesla Security quite unhappy. Photo by Murilee Martin

As someone who grew up in the East Bay, I'm proud that Teslas are being built at the old Fremont Assembly (later NUMMI) plant, not far from my childhood home. I thought it would be fun to shoot a few photos of the Bolt with the Tesla Factory in the background, as Production Hell for the Tesla Model 3 raged inside. I parked the Bolt in a non-Tesla parking lot, snapped my photos… and then got followed most of the way to the freeway by a couple of carloads of very disapproving Tesla Security enforcers. I suppose a rival EV with manufacturer plates sets off alarms all over the Tesla Security Big Board.

I'm not sure how blue became The Official Color of Electric Vehicle Badges, but there it is. Photo by Murilee Martin

This car makes sense to me as a very modern and clean transportation machine, enabling me to have a fleet of, uh, lesssensible cars.